Trading partners are often associated with one another to perform certain types of business transactions or to use shared facilities, such as a communications network. The level of trust among partners may vary depending on the nature of the association, the value of the shared resources, and the value of the transactions carried out. One way of enhancing trust between the members is for an association to charter a third party with the responsibility for governing the use of the network, enforcing business practices, and performing reporting and accounting activities appropriate to the transactions.
In the past, such third parties, including credit card, debit card, and ACH network associations, have discharged their role by actively participating in the transmission of transactions between their members, typically by establishing communications “switches” that received, parsed, evaluated, logged, routed, and transmitted the messages within a secure location controlled by the third party. These “star” or “multi-star” networks, with their centralized switches, were compatible with the networking technology of the day, which relied upon leased lines and minicomputer or mainframe-based messaging hubs.
The Internet (and internet technologies used in private networks) is designed with an entirely different architecture. More specifically, Internet technologies rely on the routing of Internet Protocol packets among routers whose functions are deliberately minimized so as to allow high-speed processing and maximum efficiency in directly connecting network endpoints. There is no small set of centralized hubs through which all messages between the endpoints flow, and functionality is deliberately devolved from the “intelligent network” to the “intelligent periphery.”
For Internet Protocol (IP) networks a new approach to governing the use of the network and the integrity of the transactions is needed.
One approach is for the third party to deploy its own devices at the periphery. There are several disadvantages of this approach, including the number of locations to be equipped, the difficulty of administering and maintaining dispersed devices, and the need to find suitable locations for sheltering, powering, cooling and securing the devices. If the devices are placed in the trading partners' data centers, then there are considerations as to whether the devices are outside a partner's firewalls, within the DMZ, or within the server farm. De-Militarized Zone refers to a network compartment separated from the external network by an external firewall and from the internal corporate networks and corporate server farms by an internal firewall. Devices located on a partner's premises may also be attacked and subverted by the partner, if there is an incentive to do so.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide a method and system for implementing effective governance of transactions between trading partners in the financial industry through a third party log entry matching entity, which overcomes the above-described inadequacies and shortcomings.